Marksmanship Hunter Mythic+ Guide (2024)

Tier Set

• 2-Set: Causes Rapid Fire to deal 20% more damage. Additionally, if you have the Trick Shots buff active, using Rapid Fire launches a Volley on your target.
• 4-Set: For every 10 Focus you spend you have a 3% chance to reset the cooldown of Rapid Fire. When it resets, your next Rapid Fire fires double the number of shots over its duration.

Single-target

Opener Rotation

• Your goal in the opener is to use as many Rapid Fires and Aimed Shots as possible.
• If none of the above are ready, fill in the gap with Arcane Shots.
• Below, you see an example of how your opener looks like using the recommended Mythic+ talent spec with variations depending on resets of Rapid Fire:

• Your Season 4, 4pc bonus introduces a lot of variation into your opener and cooldown window.

Priority List

This is a general priority you aim to maintain throughout the fight.

1. If Trueshot is NOT active, proc Steady Focus by using two Steady Shots in a row.
2. Cast Rapid Fire on cooldown.
3. Cast Explosive Shot on cooldown.
4. Use Salvo on cooldown.
5. Place Volley on your target.
   Try to time this so that you have a Rapid Fire ready while it is up to place another free Volley for extra damage.
6. Cast Aimed Shot if two charges are either off cooldown or about to be off cooldown.
7. Use Kill Shot if your target is under 20% health.
8. Use Arcane Shot if you have the Precise Shots buff active.
   By default Arcane Shot glows on your bar if this is the case.
9. Cast the rest of your Aimed Shot charges.
10. Use Arcane Shot if nothing else is available.
11. Cast Steady Shot if you're too low on Focus and everything above is on cooldown.
    Take these moments to refresh Steady Focus by using two in a row.

Multi Target

3+ Targets Opener Rotation

• Your goal in the opener is to use as many Rapid Fires and Aimed Shots as possible.
• Since your 4-set activates Trick Shots through constantly placing new Volley, you don't need to use Multi-Shot at all while Trueshot is still up.
• Below, you see an example of how your opener looks like using any of the recommended AoE talent builds with variations depending on resets of Rapid Fire:

3+ Target Priority List

1. If Trueshot is NOT active, proc Steady Focus by using two Steady Shots in a row.
2. Use Salvo on cooldown.
3. Place Volley on your targets to activate Trick Shots.
   Try to time this so that you have a Rapid Fire ready while it is up to place another free Volley.
4. Use Multi-Shot to activate Trick Shots if it is not currently active.
5. Cast Rapid Fire on cooldown.
6. Use Explosive Shot on cooldown.
7. Cast Aimed Shot on cooldown.
8. Use Multi-Shot if nothing else is available.
9. Use Kill Shot if your target is under 20% health.
10. Cast Steady Shot if you're too low on Focus and everything above is on cooldown.
    Take these moments to refresh Steady Focus by casting two in a row.

The Importance of Trick Shots on Multi Target

• It is crucial for you to ALWAYS have the Trick Shots buff active before you use Rapid Fire or Aimed Shot on Multi Target no matter what.
• Remember that using either of them always consumes your current Trick Shots buff, except when you have Volley running which constantly applies Trick Shots while active.
• Not doing this in all Multi Target cases results in a significant loss of overall damage.

Your 4-set and Rapid Fire

• With your 4-set, any time you spend Focus there is a chance that you reset the cooldown of Rapid Fire. Always be ready to use this proc as quickly as possible since Rapid Fire is your highest damage rotational ability.
• Note that you still want to make sure Trick Shots is activated before using it, even after a reset from your 4-set bonus, if you are against 3 or more targets.

Synergy between Trueshot and Volley

• Since Trueshot reduces the cooldown of Rapid Fire to less than your Volley duration, you keep replacing Volley for the entire duration of your Trueshot when played correctly.
• Because of this, when you have less than 45 seconds left before your next Trueshot use, hold Volley until then so both cooldowns can be used together for a substantial damage increase.

The Importance of Cooldown Management

The main goal with cooldowns is to use as many of them as possible throughout a dungeon, while also using them at the most ideal times for the highest DPS possible. Having a rough idea of what pulls you're gonna do and the duration of the dungeon is of utmost importance for Marksmanship Hunters in Mythic+.

Maximizing your Trueshot uses

• Trueshot has a baseline cooldown of 2 minutes, but with the talent Calling the Shots you reduce it to about 1:15-1:30~ depending on how much Focus you spend, your uptime and your Haste.
  • Always try to use it again as soon as possible after it comes up, since you lose out on Cooldown Reduction for your next Trueshot if you don't, decreasing the number of uses you get over the dungeon's duration.
  • However, you don't want to use your Trueshot in a way that leaves it active while you're in between pulls and not doing damage to anything. If a pull is close to dying when Trueshot comes off cooldown you should still hold it for the next pull instead.

Potentially good Talent Swaps you can make

There are a few talents in the default build that are situationally not very useful that you need to keep in mind.

• Swapping away from talents like Emergency Salve if there is no Poison or Disease dispel in the dungeon or Camouflage if you don't find stealth useful for the current dungeon.
  • Good replacements if you decide to do this are Kodo Tranquilizer or Devilsaur Tranquilizer if you need more Magic or Enrage dispels.
  • Bursting Shot if you find yourself in dire need of more stops or another knockback.
  • Moment of Opportunity to get a burst of movement speed increase when a Trap that you placed triggers.
  • Binding Shackles if you don't find any use for either of the aforementioned talents.
  • You can always swap from Implosive Trap to High Explosive Trap if you ever need to push the mobs away rather than keeping them in place.
    • This is especially useful during Sanguine weeks.
• Light Ammo is only good if a solid number of the pulls your tank is making have 7 or more mobs in them. If this is not the case, you should change to either Careful Aim or Steady Focus, whichever you're currently missing in the recommended build playing.

Understanding Mechanics

Rotational min-maxing is just one aspect of mastering a specialization, but there are numerous other key mechanics that influence your performance. Use the following guides to improve them.

• Pandemic
• Spell Queue Window
• Stat Diminishing Returns

← Scroll for more Dungeons →

Affixes

Learn how to effectively handle various Mythic+ Affixes as a Marksmanship Hunter. Depending on the level of the Mythic+ Dungeon you face up to two additional Affixes alongside Fortified and Tyrannical.

• Entangling
  • Very easily countered by Disengage and the talent Posthaste, which breaks Entangling instantly upon use.
• Incorporeal
  • As soon as you see the Incorporeal enemies spawning, you can throw a Freezing Trap to instantly CC it, until it despawns. Be careful if there are other mobs around since they can also trigger your Freezing Trap.
  • You can also interrupt the Incorporeal cast with Counter Shot or stun them with Intimidation.
• Bolstering
  • Tar Trap and Binding Shot can help your tank massively if a group of mobs is bolstered a lot and your tank needs to kite them.
• Spiteful
  • Placing a Binding Shot and Tar Trap on the ground as the mobs are dying off can help everyone in your group when dealing with Spiteful Shades chasing you down.
• Sanguine
  • High Explosive Trap is useful to knock enemies that are casting out of Sanguine on the ground. Just be careful with where you knock them to as to not disrupt your group in other ways.
• Bursting
  • On a big pull where you start getting a lot of Bursting stacks using Aspect of the Turtle stops you from taking damage from your current Bursting stacks, as well as negate any newly applied stacks for the duration of Aspect of the Turtle.
• Raging
  • Tranquilizing Shot is very useful against Raging, instantly dispelling it of your chosen target when they have it up.
  • Devilsaur Tranquilizer in your Class tree can find extra use during Raging weeks, enabling you to dispel them more often.
  • Focus on using this against more threatening mobs or mobs that have important casts that need to be stopped.

Understand your secondary stat priority and the tertiary stats needed for optimal performance during Mythic+ dungeons as a Marksmanship Hunter. For more detailed information, visit the Stats and Attributes guide.

• All secondary stats are affected by diminishing returns. Click here to learn more!

Tertiary

• Avoidance - Great stat to reduce the damage intake of "Area of Effect" abilities.
• Leech - Provides additional healing through dealing damage. Great stat especially in AoE scenarios.
• Speed - Way less useful for you since Marksmanship Hunter already has great mobility, but it can help you deal with certain mechanics in Mythic+ more easily or increase your overall DPS slightly.

Trinkets

Below you can find active and passive alternatives to the recommended trinkets. Do note that some trinkets are better than others depending on the scenario.

Active Trinket alternatives

• Algeth'ar Puzzle Box
  • Short cast granting you Mastery for 30 seconds, most often used in combination with Trueshot.
  • Useful if you want more on demand burst compared to Whispering Incarnate Icon.
• Irideus Fragment
  • Same cooldown as Algeth'ar Puzzle Box, while providing more burst but less damage overall.
• Ashes of the Embersoul
  • Has a 2 minute cooldown which lines up better with Trueshot if you do not talent into Calling the Shots. Okay alternative if you don't want to farm Mythic+ for either of the previous trinkets.
• Manic Grieftorch
  • A trinket with a 2 second channel time that does a lot of damage on demand.
  • Especially useful when there are targets that need to die quickly, having this high amount of on demand burst can be very valuable.
  • Resets its cooldown when someone in your group dies, unless they die too far away from you, which increases its overall damage significantly.

Passive Trinket alternatives

• Neltharion's Call to Dominance
  • Give you a lot of agility when you use your Trueshot and can be combined with one of the on-use trinkets to give your cooldown window even more burst.
• Whispering Incarnate Icon
  • A strong trinket, especially if all other roles in your group are also using this trinket.
• Ominous Chromatic Essence
  • Competitive and sometimes better than Whispering Incarnate Icon if there are other people in your group providing the other stat bonuses.
• Augury of the Primal Flame
  • Very potent if you need more Single-Target focused damage during Tyrannical week.
• Bottle of Spiraling Winds
  • Mythic+ option, won't perform as well as the previous trinkets but is an alright farmable filler option.

Situational Items

• Ward of Faceless Ire
  • Situationally used in High Mythic+ for a defensive shield to survive certain mechanics, at the loss of damage.
• Voice of the Silent Star
  • More damage at a loss of survivability. Useful on lower key levels.

Simcraft

To find the best combination of gear available to you or identify the best possible upgrades, visit our Simcraft guide to learn how to utilize Simcraft easily and effectively.

• Blue Silken Lining x 2
  • Ideally, you put this embellishment in the Neck and the Bracer slot, but Waist and Boots are also okay alternatives.

Honorable mention

• Adaptive Dracothyst Armguards
  • Only available as bracers and is very competitive, even winning out on Single-Target.
• Choker of Shielding
  • Only available as a neck.
  • This embellishment makes you lose some damage while gaining access to a big shield on a 3 minute cooldown.
  • This can be very useful in keys with bosses that deal a lot of damage to you, especially on Tyrannical weeks.
• Elemental Lariat
  • Only available as a neck.
  • If you have a full socket setup this can be competitive with Blue Silken Lining.

Remaining Sparks

• Make sure to apply Alchemical Flavor Pocket if you have an additional crafted item equipped since it does not take one of your two embellishment slots.
• Crafted items are 525 item level and regular items are 528 on max item level, therefore, it's not beneficial to equip crafted items outside of your 2x embellishments unless you don't have access to other high item level gear on that slot.

• You can swap to Enchant Ring - Devotion of Versatility on your rings if you feel in need of more Versatility for extra defensive value with barely any loss to overall damage, if any depending on your current gear setup.

Phials

• Iced Phial of Corrupting Rage -- maximum DPS.
• Phial of Tepid Versatility -- less DPS but more survivability.

• It is recommended to use Phial of Tepid Versatility in high keys for the extra defensive value it brings since that is more often important for completing those higher key levels than raw damage.

Food

• Grand Banquet of the Kalu'ak
• Deviously Deviled Eggs
• Fated Fortune Cookie

All these food options provide the same amount of agility to you.

Combat Potion

• Elemental Potion of Ultimate Power
• Residual Neural Channeling Agent
  • Can be used while being dead if your potion is ready.

Health Potion

• Potion of Withering Dreams -- a big burst of healing but applies a damage over time effect to you
• Dreamwalker's Healing Potion -- less healing upfront but an additional small heal over time.

Weapon Rune

• Completely Safe Rockets

Augment Rune

• Dreambound Augment Rune -- Requires Reputation
• Draconic Augment Rune

Sockets

• Inscribed Illimited Diamond -- Unique, made by work order
• Radiant Alexstraszite or Radiant Malygite

For min-maxing a Marksmanship Hunter in Mythic+, different racial traits can provide a tremendous benefit to your characters. If this is not your top goal, picking a race that fits your style works just as well.

As a Marksmanship Hunter you have the option to choose any race in the game except Dracthyr, below is a list the most useful ones for you in Mythic+.

Alliance

• Stoneform -- Dwarf
  • Able to dispel a lot of debuffs from you on demand, while also providing you with a 10% physical damage reduction upon use.
• Might of the Mountain -- Dwarf
  • Passively increasing your Critical Damage and Healing done by 2%.
• Some Use-cases for Stoneform in the Dragonflight Season 4 Dungeons are
  • Bursting stacks.
  • Splinterbark on Overgrown Ancient (Algeth'ar Academy).
  • Deep Chill from Glacial Proto-Dragons (Halls of Infusion).
  • Withering from Fetid Rotsingers and Brackenhide Shapers (Brackenhide Hollow).
  • Earthen Shards from Sentinel Talondras (Uldaman: Legacy of Tyr).
  • Stolen Time from Infinite Timereavers (Uldaman: Legacy of Tyr).
  • Dragon Strike from Chargath (Neltharus).
  • Bold Ambush from Qalashi Hunters (Neltharus)

• Will to Survive -- Human
  • Can break you out of certain CC, even in PvE scenarios.
• The Human Spirit -- Human
  • You gain 2% more secondary stats from all sources.

• Spatial Rift -- Void Elf
  • Throws out a shadowy projectile in front of you, if you press this button again after the projectile is thrown out, you teleport to its current location. Occasionally extremely helpful for movement.
• Entropic Embrace -- Void Elf
  • Occasionally empowering you to deal 5% more damage with all your spells for 12 seconds.

Horde

• War Stomp -- Tauren
  • Stuns 5 enemies close to you for 2 seconds.
• Endurance -- Tauren
  • Increases your maximum health.
• Brawn -- Tauren
  • Passively increasing your Critical Damage and Healing done by 2%.

• Berserking -- Troll
  • Increases your Haste by 10% for 12 seconds. Useful if you want a damage racial that provides more burst damage.

• Rocket Jump -- Goblin
  • About the same as Disengage, except it launches you forward instead of backwards. Can be very useful on certain encounters with heavy movement.
• Time is Money -- Goblin
  • Increases your Haste by 1%.

• Gnome and Night Elf, with the active abilities Escape Artist for Gnome to break roots and Shadowmeld for Night Elf, have proven useful in the past.
  • However, you already have access to the same capabilities as Marksmanship Hunter with Disengage breaking roots on use and Feign Death generally working on the same things as Shadowmeld does, so they are much less useful for you.

Recommendation

For you as a Marksmanship Hunter, the overall most useful races for you to play would be Dwarf for Alliance and Tauren for Horde, with the former winning out overall since Stoneform has had much more usefulness in Mythic+ compared to most other racial active abilities that don't effect your damage.

Both of these races provide you with close to if not the most amount of damage increase compared to other races, both for your spec and the other specs of the Hunter class, as well as both of them providing you with some defensive bonuses on top.

Discover recommended macros for Marksmanship Hunter during Mythic+ dungeons and watch a quick video guide on creating simple macros for your character.

Macro Import Guide Video

#showtooltip/cast [@cursor] Volley

#showtooltip /cast [@cursor] Freezing Trap

#showtooltip/cast [@cursor] Tar Trap

#showtooltip /cast [@cursor] Binding Shot

#showtooltip/cast [@cursor] Implosive Trap

#showtooltip/cast [@cursor] High Explosive Trap

#showtooltip /cast [@cursor] Flare

Below, you see a screenshot of the author's User Interface for their Marksmanship Hunter, outlining which addons are used and how they are utilized in Mythic+ dungeons to make your life easier.

Credits

Written By: Solwinas

Reviewed By: Shodam, Rycn